THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



MAY, 1887. 

 THE NATURAL YEBSUS THE SUPERNATURAL. 



By JOHN BUKKOUGHS. 



OUR theological professors make a mistake when they think they 

 have weakened or parried the objections of science to their doc- 

 trines by pointing to the fact that science is constantly revising or re- 

 versing its own conclusions ; that what was deemed good science at 

 one time is found to be false science at another. " This modern infalli- 

 bility which men call science " is a phrase used by Rev. Dr. Jenkins 

 in criticising in the "Evangelist" my paper on "Science and The- 

 ology" in the December number of this magazine. 



" We who are yet upon the safe side of the ministerial dead-line," 

 he says, " can remember when it w r as scientific to assert the diverse ori- 

 gin of the race ' from four or six pairs ' of progenitors ; and we have 

 come to the day in which science will not leave us as much as Adam 

 and Eve for a beginning. We have learned the igneous origin of gran- 

 ite, just in time to be commanded to unlearn it, and substitute an 

 aqueous origin." And the conclusion, therefore, is that science is dis- 

 credited, and that he who builds upon it plants his house upon the 

 sands. But science makes no claim to infallibility ; it leaves that 

 claim to be made by theology. " This shifting of positions and this 

 changing of results " but marks its growth, its development ; and it is 

 precisely this active and inquiring spirit, this readiness to correct its 

 errors, and this eagerness to reach a larger generalization, that makes 

 it the enemy of the traditional theology. It abandoned the Ptolemaic 

 system of astronomy for the Copernican, because the latter was found 

 to be the most complete generalization ; but theology still adheres to 

 its Ptolemaic system of things. To seek to discredit science because 

 it has made mistakes, and has had to unlearn many things, is to deny 

 the very principle of progress ; it is to reflect upon the child because 

 he grows into a man. The main outlines of the physical universe sci- 



TOL. XXXI. l 



